Before the Dawn
by sleepyowlet
Summary: A lengthy conversation between a condemned woman and her guard. Really can't say more – it would spoil the whole thing. This piece happened when I tried to get the facts straight for the sequel I'm planning to my  hopefully  soon to be finished fanfic ToD


Title: Before the Dawn

Rating: M

Mood: contemplative

Words: ~2300

Author: sleepyowlet

Disclaimer: Dragon Age belongs to BioWare. I'm not making any profit.

Summary: A lengthy conversation between a condemned woman and her guard.

Babblerama: Really can't say more – it would spoil the whole thing. This piece happened when I tried to get the facts straight for the sequel I'm planning to my soon to be finished fanfic "Truth Or Dare".

Warning: Mention of under-age sex, non explicit.

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Before the Dawn

by sleepyowlet

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Cassius yawned again. It was after midnight, and he was stuck guarding this prisoner. When he had taken his post hours ago, she hadn't even looked up, had simply continued to sit on her cot, staring at her folded hands with an unreadable expression on her face. It was eerie; the way she didn't move at all, except the subtle shift of her long, dark hair as her ribcage expanded and contracted with each slow breath she took.

He almost jumped out of his skin when she finally lifted her head and turned towards him.

"Are you tired, soldier?" she asked in a voice like smoke and honey, and he suddenly understood why so many had followed her on her doomed quest.

She wasn't young any more; the years of her life, the elements, and loss had marked her face, but she still seemed beautiful to him, sitting there in her simple red dress which was stained with sweat and dirt. She was looking at him as if she was concerned about him, as if she genuinely cared. He shifted uncomfortably under her gaze and averted his eyes.

"Yes," he finally mumbled.

"I find myself unable to sleep, my young friend; so why don't we talk a little? Tell me about your life, about your family," the prisoner gently suggested.

Cassius took a step backwards, his hand moving to the hilt of his sword.

"No! You'll just bewitch me!" he cried, wincing at the high squeak his voice suddenly became.

The prisoner blinked at him unbelieving, then burst out in laughter. Not a refined, womanly titter, but a loud, deep belly-laugh.

"And how would that help me, exactly? Yes, I could perhaps make you set me free, but then what? I'd somehow have to charm every single soldier here... an impossible feat."

Cassius blushed and let his hand drop. She was right. This was, actually, the reason why he was chosen to guard her alone – should she bewitch him it would not take much to subdue the most junior member of the guard.

"Fine," he said ungraciously, "Let us talk then. But I'd rather hear about you. There are many rumours, and every one of them contradicts the other; I'd like to know the truth."

The prisoner shot him a long, piercing glance.

"It is not often one meets someone who will rather listen than speak. Very well, I'll tell you my version of the story. I haven't told anyone before, not even my husband; but there is no reason why I shouldn't tell you. Sit down, my young friend, nobody will care if you sat or stood guarding me."

Cassius nodded and fetched himself a pail which he flipped upside-down to sit on. She was right, he thought, nobody would care.

"I was born in a little settlement you wouldn't have heard the name of. It was near the southern coast of the Waking Sea, far beyond the Frostback Mountains. My parents were simple folk, living a simple life. I did as other children did; I ran, I played, I danced, and I sang. I loved singing more than anything, my voice was as clear as a mountain stream, these days. But all that ended when a Tevinter Magister and his soldiers came to our village, capturing people to sell as slaves. This is how I came to Tevinter."

Cassius felt his jaw drop.

"You... you were a slave?"

"Yes," the prisoner answered serenely, "I came to Tevinter in irons. During the long trip over the Waking Sea I comforted the other children the Tevinter had caught with my songs. That was why my Master bought me, in the end. At first I refused to sing for him and the slaver had me whipped bloody for that. I still carry the scars..." the prisoner said, her voice trailing off, lost in the memory.

"But of course that cowed me enough so I eventually did his bidding," she continued, "And I sang for him, and I hated myself for it. But then I started to show signs."

"Signs?" Cassius asked.

"Yes, it became apparent that I was a mage. My master was overjoyed, of course, because that made me so much more valuable. He started to teach me the basics, taught me how to control my gift. Of course he denied me a staff, but I learned how to use my voice as focus instead, keeping my new-found abilities secret. He was quite high up in the hierarchy and knew many secrets... The first time he took me to bed was when I was sixteen, and after that he used to augment his powers by both laying with me and bleeding me. That is how I came to know about the Darkspawn."

"But," Cassius protested confusedly, "everybody knows about the Darkspawn!"

It was true, there had been a terrible Blight that had decimated the power of the Imperium.

"But you don't know how they had come to be. You see, the Imperium needs two things to exist – blood and lyrium. And the Magisters were tired of buying the latter from the dwarves. So they used slaves, blood magic, and the blood of one of their very own gods, whom they had drawn out of the Fade, to create an army that would multiply by itself to conquer the deep."

Cassius was too shocked to say anything. The Magisters had done this? They had created the Darkspawn? But they had said that the Blight had been created by the last of the free elves!

"You know how it went, of course. My master was tasked with trying to reverse what had happened, and he wasn't the first one who tried. He didn't succeed, but he did find a way of making humans immune to the taint, something that at last granted them victory. Then he gave that substance to a few imprisoned knights from the Anderfels, who then killed him and escaped with the secret. They managed to defeat the Archdemon and to end the Blight, but the gods were gone from the Fade, creating an imbalance. The Golden City turned black, and the souls of the living could no longer find any rest. The Fade is the mirror of our world, what effects one also affects the other. The Gods are now stuck in our world, and they need a dying soul to attach themselves to to return to the Fade. The balance will be restored as soon as all Gods have gone back."

The prisoner took a deep breath and continued.

"I used the confusion to escape. The only thing I wanted to do was to go home. But of course, after more than ten years nothing remained. The settlement I used to live in was still there, but the people told me after I finally arrived almost two years later, that everyone I had once known had died in a raid four years earlier. I was quite numb for a while and didn't know what to do. The only thought that had sustained me during my time as a slave was that I'd escape and go home one day."

Cassius lowered his head and tried to imagine what he'd feel like if he'd come home to find his whole family, his mother, his father and his silly little brother dead. He failed.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly.

The prisoner smiled at him and shook her head.

"No need, that was hardly your fault. You must have been a little boy when it happened. But even though everyone I loved was gone, and the town was populated with new faces I stayed, using my magic to help people, and I sang my songs full of joy again."

A gentle smile lit up her face as she said these words.

"Word spread, of course, and it didn't take long until the leader of the tribe took notice of me. He fell in love with me, and we married. He was older than me, and he had lost a wife already, so he treated me as if I was made of spun glass."

"Did you love him?" Cassius asked.

"No, not at first. But I grew to love him after some time and gave him three children. You see, I was a stranger to his people, even though I was born in his very land. I had no family, no one to speak in my favour but the few friends I had made. I was afraid that he would banish me if I spurned him. So I married him, and I wasn't unhappy.

"But times were hard. Tevinter had to rebuilt, and they needed lots of slaves to do that. So they sent out many raiding parties, and rarely a day passed without news reaching us that another town, another village had been attacked. But now I was the wife of the Teyrn – people listened to me. Oh yes, they listened very closely when I told them how weak the Imperium was when the chiefs convened for the Thing my husband had called for. And they decided that they would unite to protect their people and stop the Tevinter from enslaving us."

Cassius shuddered.

"And that's how it began? The uprising?"

"Yes. Our very first strike couldn't have been luckier. We attacked a group of slavers and freed their prisoners. They were elves. Free elves, not the pitiful creatures that you know. No, they were proud and unbroken, and when we freed them they took a delegation of us to one of their secret strongholds. I promised them that I would free their brethren and would make sure they would have their own realm again, and in return they promised that they would fight by my side. And they did. And they were formidable."

Cassius shuddered.

"Yes, I heard. We lost many to their arrows."

The prisoner nodded and continued.

"We were like the storm, and took back our lands. And then others joined and we went further and further, and nothing could stand against us. The Keepers taught me ancient elven arts, and I learned to cast with my sword, and to use my magic as my strength."

"But how did you manage to keep them together? How did you keep the different tribes and what not from tearing each other's throat out?" Cassius asked.

The prisoner smirked.

"Belief, my young friend. I created a belief everyone could live with."

"The Maker," Cassius said, "Is he real?"

"Who knows," she answered, "Perhaps. The Gods rule the Fade and influence our world too, they are our teachers and our guardians, but they aren't our creators. Surely you know that. So whoever created them surely created the world. Perhaps the Maker _is_ the world, and we are part of Him, each of us a spark of His holy flame. And now that the Gods are gone from the Fade and imprisoned beneath the stone, who will we turn to? I had to give them something."

Cassius shuddered. The Gods were gone? Well, not gone, but ... out of commission.

"They call you the Bride of the Maker," he said.

"Yes, and some call themselves my Disciples. I found that I was no longer a simple woman, I had become a symbol, and my people wanted to believe in me, wanted to believe that I was, myself, divine. And I let them. Maybe that was my mistake, but I didn't see any other way. Perhaps I had grown too prideful myself.

"Because that, in the end led to my downfall. My beloved husband grew jealous, and he started to doubt me, saying that we were spread too thin, that we couldn't take the rest of the Imperium. But I was convinced that we could. So he betrayed me. He haggled out a truce and handed his wife over to her old tormentors. And again I sit in a room with barred windows, wearing irons," she said, lifting her hands in emphasis, and Cassius saw, when her sleeves slid back, that her wrists were encircled by manacles, linked by a short, heavy chain.

"My husband sold me out, and I'm going to die tomorrow. But I leave this world with no regrets, because I succeeded in what I had set out to do; I freed my people, and I gave the elves their own land in the Dales. The Imperium lost half its territory, and I'm quite sure that they will lose more in the future. Their choke-hold on Thedas is broken, perhaps forever, and perhaps, one day, even the last of their slaves will be free."

The prisoner leant back against the wall and closed her eyes.

"Tomorrow they will bind me and burn me at the stake. I shall sing my last song; and it will be a song of freedom, my vision of the future that I have never abandoned, and never will. I thank you for your company in my last night, my young friend, and I hope that you will remember me fondly."

Cassius swallowed and nodded, unable to speak, and she with her eyes closed was unable to see the gesture. But he had the feeling that she knew, and he promised himself that he would never forget this night.


End file.
